[irrational]

What is preventing Europe from creating media that reflect their culture and exporting it to the world? If Europe could create music, movies, etc. that are more popular than the offerings from the US then... problem solved?

[kuschku]

Simply said, economics. This is a winner-takes-all problem, nothing short of banning US media and forcing creation of a local media industry will be able to do that.

[kodis]

I don't really see it as a winner-takes-all situation. Here in the US my wife and I both enjoy many of the BBC productions, the 'Brit-com' comedy shows, and have noticed that a significant percentage to the actors even in US produced shows are from the UK or Australia.

It seems that there's plenty of room for good programs no matter what their country of origin.

[kuschku]

How many German productions have you seen? How many French?

Germany and France each produce just as much or even more content than the UK.

Yet, none of this content ever leaves the country. British content can directly be sold on the US market, which means they can get much more money from those licensing deals to finance more productions.

The only situation where German or French productions show up internationally are nature documentaries (many of the documentaries the BBC or PBS show are produced by Germans, or as cooperation).

The English-speaking market is so large that English productions always have an advantage, and US productions even more. A US production reaches 300 million people in its home market, and a billion globally. A German production reaches 80 million in the home market, and 130 million globally.

And that's without the venefits hollywood has from having all the actors, staff and technology in one place.

This battle has been decided long ago.

[Grue3]

>Yet, none of this content ever leaves the country.

And whose fault is this? People enjoy Japanese media all over the world despite the language barrier. French media used to be very popular in my country, like for example Louis de Funès movies? Even Iceland produces media that's popular worldwide, like Lazy Town or Bjork.

[kuschku]

Is there any pair of countries (A, B) so that A != USA, B != USA, and A consumes more movies from B than from USA?

I’d argue that no such pair of countries exists, except potentially ones with restricted media import rules, e.g. the pair of (North Korea, China).

[Grue3]

There probably are (something like Sri-Lanka/India or Guatemala/Mexico), but even if there aren't, what is this supposed to indicate? Yes, USA has strong film industry, fueled by its strong economy and large population. American films are distributed worldwide and tend to be popular with people. There's no other country that can match USA in the sheer volume (maybe China and India). But when making a movie you don't need to compete with the entire country. You just need to produce something that's appealing to the audiences. Somebody from Bulgaria doesn't care if the movie is American or German made, it's going to be dubbed in Bulgarian anyway.

[dragonwriter]

> How many German productions have you seen? How many French?

Quite a few French, actually.

[kodis]

Also, Spanish, so much so that our cable TV provider offers several 'all Spanish all the time' cable stations.

[dragonwriter]

Spanish is a bit complicated in this context because I think the question was about nation of origin not language (though language is the offered reason for French/German-origin productions being hard to export.) A lot of the Spanish-language content in the US is, I think, US origin. Though a fair amount is of Latin American (particularly Mexican) origin, and some from elsewhere. But, yeah, there is a lot of Spanish-language, foreign produced content consumed in the US, and not all by native Spanish speakers.